Russia has become a hostage to Putin’s political persona
examines the emerging ideology fostered by Russia and how it is defined by what it is against as what it is for.
Unsurprisingly, Vladimir Putin has won Sunday’s so-called ‘election’ for his fourth term as president of Russia.
That puts him on course to further entrench his power, pursue an expansive foreign policy and continue his escalating showdown with the West.
However, one of his most significant goals to enhance his stature may be one that has thus far fallen under the radar: the development of a post-Soviet ideology for his country.
Since he came to power in 1999, Putin has defined and become synonymous with modern Russia. By the end of his fourth presidential term in 2024 (including his stint as prime minister in 2008-2012), Putin will have ruled Russia for longer than any other Russian or Soviet leader besides Stalin.
Back in 2014, first deputy head of the presidential administration, Vyacheslav Volodin, stated “If there’s Putin — there’s Russia, if there’s no Putin — there’s no Russia.”
Putin would want nothing more than the West and the Russian population to agree.
While Russia is broad and diverse, the country has become hostage to Putin’s persona and his emergent ideology. This presents a crisis of identity.
For a country that desires the status of a great power and civilisation rather than that of Putin’s personal fiefdom, Russia requires a mission statement — an ideology offering a distinct worldview.
Russia's presidential election handed another victory to Putin, but the vote was marred in many districts, including cases of apparent ballot-box stuffing recorded on video. pic.twitter.com/3e9ubKsv0E
— Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (@RFERL) March 19, 2018
Putin needs this “raison d’être” not only as a distraction from Russia’s stagnating economy, but also to provide a legacy that offers an alternative to the Western model of liberal democracy.
And while many of his recent actions may have appeared impulsive, his inner circle has increasingly provided the contours of a nascent national philosophy.
Developing an ideology may seem an unlikely preoccupation for a popular autocratic regime that is not afraid to flex its military muscle and rattle its nuclear sabre.
However, defining its vision of itself is an important existential task for a country where modern statehood is still novel, and which has only recently emerged from policy goals based on Soviet-era Marxism-Leninism.
Branding itself is even more crucial for a country that seeks to play a grand global role but is unwilling to accept Western norms of legitimacy for domestic governance and for international diplomacy.
What could serve as the basis of Russia’s new ideology?
In the early years of his administration, Putin promised the Russian public prosperity and stability.
But as Russia’s economy failed to diversify and became ever more dependent on natural resource exports, as corruption became more entrenched, and most importantly as oil prices started falling in 2014, that message of prosperity sounds increasingly hollow.
In recent years, several distinct themes have emerged from the Kremlin: sovereignty, conservatism, orthodoxy, and a messianic drive for great power status.
Sovereignty became the Kremlin’s watchword following Nato’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999.
Putin’s more notable recent appeals to national sovereignty came in a 2013 op-ed in The New York Times, in which he made the case for using international law to counter America’s unilateral intervention in Syria.
Since then, Moscow has emphasised inalienable “national sovereignty” that gives states full authority over their territories in contrast to the American or European notion of a government’s limited sovereignty.
Putin’s column, together with Moscow’s decision to grant asylum to American whistleblower Edward Snowden the same year, marked the start of Moscow’s efforts to present itself as a moral global actor countering, especially, the US.
Indeed, much of the emerging ideology defines itself more by what it’s against than what it’s for: anti-American, anti-West, anti-liberalism, anti-globalisation, anti-cosmopolitanism, and anti-progressive.
In many of his speeches, Putin cites Ivan Ilyin, a Russian philosopher who warned in a 1950s essay that terms like democratisation, liberalisation and freedom were tools for destroying the unity and Eurasian spirit of the Russian civilization.
Over the next six years, Putin’s government will make an effort to solidify and codify an alternative world view — a view Russia is eager to offer for domestic consumption as well as export.
For the Kremlin, this vision will represent legitimacy and a patriotic mission statement for the 21st Century. For the West, it is important to recognise and to call out the hollowness of this vision, rather than falling into the trap of accepting it as a justification for this regime.
The West won the Cold War because it won the competition for ideas and ideals.
It will win again if it can overcome the challenges of the fraying relations between a politically-divided US and a fragmenting Europe to stay firm to a vision and mission that is more positive than whatever Putin devises in his latest term of office.
